Releasing a new prepared in conjunction with Cordell at an industry breakfast in Sydney, the Housing Industry Association said Brookfield Multiplex had come in in top spot being awarded $6.1 billion worth of contracts in 2014/15 across the community, commercial and multi-unit residential segments of the major project markets.

Laing O’Rourke came in second followed by John Holland, Probuild and BGC.

Brookfield Multiplex also topped the list for the commercial, multi-residential and community building sectors, while Laing O’Rourke took out top spot in civil construction and BGC ruled the roost in mining.

Interestingly, large companies appear to have gained market share compared with their smaller rivals over the past year, as the nation’s largest 100 companies increased their overall share of the market according to the dollar value of contracts won from 30 per cent in 2013/14 to 46 per cent in 2014/15.

Also unsurprisingly, big builders are shifting their focus away from mining and toward the more promising sectors of multi-residential, community building and civil construction.

Compared with the previous year, starts on multi-residential and community projects among the top 100 companies almost doubled, whilst those in civil engineering and community building rose by around 60 per cent and 20 per cent respectively.

By contrast, top 100 commencements in resource related work came in at around $2 billion – much lower than the $40 billion odd in commencements on which they broke ground in 20110/11.

Housing Industry Association chief economist Harley Dale welcomed the data, saying a growing volume of major projects in the building sector is picking up some of the slack as resource-related work winds back. He cautioned, however, that the industry appears to be heavily reliant upon the multi-residential sector to do much of the heavy lifting.

“There has been a changing of the guard in the CONSTRUCTION 100 this year,” Dale said. "Over the last few years the list has been dominated by firms tied to the large mining projects, but those times have passed.

“While it is good to see the construction industry is navigating the transition away from mining dominated activity reasonably well, to date it has primarily been the resurgence of the residential sector doing the heavy lifting.

“The sustainability of this relatively smooth transition now hinges on a broadening of the mix of construction work across more sectors of the economy, and there are tentative signs that this may be on the horizon.”

Cordell managing director Michael Hughes said the current pipeline of major projects was healthier now than at any time in recent history, with an estimated 13,689 projects worth $99 billion at development application stage and a further 13,705 worth $118 billion at development approval stage.

Project numbers were particularly strong in the multi-unit and aged care segment, he said.

These are good questions and I am currently following this up with HIA as publishers of the report to gain clarification on this.

The rankings are based on the dollar value of contracts secured within Australia from July 1 2014 to June 30 2015. Certainly, at a glance of their major announcements made over the course of this time, it looks as though Lend Lease had a fairly quiet year in terms of new contracts won domestically by their standards. Leighton Contractors, however, singed a number of major infrastructure projects in Sydney over the period as well as a major contract for work on the Northern Beaches hospital. I am following up to check why they were not included (possibly, they did not submit their data for inclusion in the list).

Further to the comment above, I have spoken to HIA and can confirm that neither of the two aforementioned companies choose to provide their data for this report. This will of course explain their absence from the list.